It occurs that in toll collection facilities fees are collected for passing motor highways, bridges, tunnels and other vehicle transport passages having high construction costs. Thereby, an economic contribution to construction and maintenance costs is obtained. First, tolls were manually collected in toll booths which the vehicles must pass. Then, paying cards and gates were introduced which were temporarily opened by presenting such a card. The latest development includes that in the toll gate an installation is provided for non-contact reading of identification units on passing vehicles, so that vehicles do not have to stop. Then, usually, for the communication a microwave transceiver is used in the stationary unit and transponders in the vehicles. Then the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,739,328 Koelle et al. may be used. For registering the fee, an identity obtained from the vehicle unit is accessed making a debiting of the cost possible. A still more rational system is obtained in the case where the stationary unit activates registering the fee in the vehicle unit, so that the fee can be deducted from amount stored in a pre-paid card, a so-called Smart Card, with which the vehicle unit can be provided.
It also occurs that it is desired to provide heavily trafficked areas, such as city cores, with entrance toll collection facilities. In such cases the possibility of obtaining revenues is not the primary object but the most important object generally is that thereby a means is obtained of restricting the traffic in such areas by reducing "unnecessary driving" and a major reason for transferring from personal transports by private cars to public transportation services is produced. In the development of the method comprising non-contact registering of passing vehicles the interest of installing this kind of zone toll facilities has increased.
Within zones in which entrance control using fees is of interest, in addition to the problem related to dense traffic, generally parking problems also exist. It has been known for a long time to control parking by means of charges which are most often paid by means of automatic parking meters. Beside control of, in particular, long-time parking at locations placed remotely from the most frequented streets and places, some economic contribution is obtained to the installation and maintenance of the parking lots.
However, the system comprising parking meters has many disadvantages. Thus, they require a lot of staff for supervising; in order that the paying morality will be maintained and in order that the control will be efficient, each vehicle must at some intervals be checked by patrolling supervisors. Installation and maintenance as well as service of and collecting money from automatic meters have considerable costs and the parking meters often give an ugly impression in the general look of a town and in addition makes cleaning of the streets difficult. To a user they are uncomfortable to the extent that he often is uncertain of the length of the time period for which the necessary prepayment is to be made. A return too late to the vehicle results in a risk for parking fines and paying for a longer time than planned mostly results in unnecessary costs. An system alternative to parking meters includes areas or parking houses having pay desks at the exits, at which one pays for the time between entrance and exit. In some respects, this is a more versatile system. However, it can only be used to a limited extent in built-up areas, in which it mostly is necessary to arrange possibilities for parking along streets and on isolated, smaller parking lots.